Dear friends:

Our people have learned with profound indignation of the decision by Kathleen Cardone, a federal judge in El Paso, Texas, to grant release on bail  to Luis Posada Carriles, the most dangerous terrorist in the Western Hemisphere,  main perpetrator and the mastermind behind the mid-flight bombing of a Cuban airliner in October 1976 with 73 people on board, including a delegation of young Cuban athletes.

President Bush said: “Any person, organization or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent, and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.”

Bail for this dangerous and unscrupulous murderer and the attempt to solely try him for immigration crimes against the United States, is the absolute responsibility of the White House and  further proof of the falseness and hypocrisy of George W. Bush administration as well as another confirmation of the double standards in its supposed crusade against terrorism.

The ruling by the federal judge on April 6 coincided with the 10th Anniversary of the start of a series of attacks on tourist resorts in Havana, which cost the life of Italian citizen Fabio Di Celmo and injured many Cubans. Another of Posada Carriles’ criminal actions, which he himself admitted, with matchless cynicism, to the United States media.

With respect to his release, international news agencies reported that the judge’s decision included consenting to Posada Carriles’ residing in the city of Miami, Florida. The same city that since 1959 has been home to the most notorious anti-Cuban terrorists and the cradle of hundreds of genocidal plans against our people. The same city where five heroic young Cubans, anti-terrorist fighters, today the protagonists of an immense international solidarity movement for their freedom, were unjustly subjected to brutal sentences in a trial plagued with irregularities and held amidst the intimidation and terror of those same terrorist groups.

For two years, Comrade Fidel Castro has been exposing the attempts by the United States government to protect the murderer Posada Carriles, and alerting international public opinion so that this notorious terrorist does not escape justice, and so that the suffering of the families of his victims over the loss of their loved ones is not aggravated by the pain of their murderer’s impunity.

Today, comrade Fidel, in his reflections on the granting of bail to Posada Carriles, described this action as a brutal response by the United States government to protect someone who trained in the art of killing and was faithful to his trainers by killing and sowing pain not only among Cuban families, but also among Latin American brothers and sisters, given his complicity in the notorious Operation Condor. Posada Carriles, as Fidel describes him, is a monster of torture, physical disappearance and death. For that he should stand trial.

ICAP urges all friends of Cuba throughout the world to create a mass movement to protest the perpetration of another attack on justice and human dignity.

We demand justice for the crimes of Posada Carriles not to go unpunished. This battle is not only for Cuba and its glorious martyrs in defense of their people, it is for humanity, the happiness of future generations and the guarantee of a peaceful world.

Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples

(ICAP) 10-04-2007